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Mr. Von Wagenen: I would like to sound a note of warning in addition to that last statement in regard to placing high grade feeble-minded children out on farms. I have personal knowledge enough, I think, to make it proper for me to say that there is the greatest risk in placing these children out in that way on farms. There may be here and there a farmer who is in a position, both as to intelligence and affluence, to take an interest in the feeble-minded child and do for him or her as a child ought to be done by, but I am sure that he is the exception and that to attempt to dispose of any number of feeble-minded children in that way will be running the greatest risk to the individual child and furthermore to the continuance of the same type. Again, I assure you from my knowledge of rural life, that while there is less of actual immorality because there are fewer people, there is no less relatively, of immorality in the country than there is in the most densely populated part of the great cities. Some of the vilest places you can find are right in the hills of New England, and these children would be exposed, I am sure, to such things and without having in the great majority of cases any sufficient protection.

Dr. Bernstein: Mr. President, you cannot work those boys too hard. If they work them as hard as they can they will not practice the vices to which the gentleman alludes. Let them go out and work just as hard as they will work. That is what they have to do for me when they work on the farm. They work so that when they come in at night they go to bed and sleep. Then they get up the next morning and go to work again, and I am very sure that the farmers who are working them the hardest are keeping them the best in line of good behavior. Miss Boehne suggests that the boy was overworked. Of course, we know that there are some tubercular conditions among the feeble-minded, that should be considered. About half of our population are subject to these same conditions.

Dr. Murdoch: Mr. President, in regard to the defective delinquent, we know that this type requires a closer supervision and care than the ordinary feeble-minded child. We cannot allow the same amount of liberty to the defective delinquent that we can to our ordinary simple feeble-minded and imbecile. Now what are we going to do with them? Are we going to take care of them in our institutions for feeble-minded in special departments or are we going to take care of them in the institutions for delinquents, the reformatories, or are we going to have separate institutions for this particular class? I am somewhat in doubt as to the best practice but I think that this matter has been carefully considered in Massachusetts and I would like to hear from Dr. Fernald on this point.

Dr. Emerick: Possibly we do not all have the magnetic influence to keep in touch with these children who are farmed out that Dr. Fernald has, and it is possible that other states have not the environment Massachusetts has to put them in. Our experience in placing out has been anything but good. One of the first cases that came to my attention after going to the institution was that of one of our girls who was taken by one of the trustees into a home where the associations were of the very best. She soon drifted away and he said he would never try the experiment again. A former superintendent when he left took a little girl with him into a modern home. She was left alone at the house one day and one of the neighboring boys assaulted her. Of course, they never left her alone again. I let one of our boys go out and in sixty days he was married. I let another one out and he wound up in the police station. Another boy I call to mind went out with a very good farmer and an ex-school teacher a very intelligent and well-meaning man, but the boy has gone to the dogs. My experience has been so universally unfavorable in this matter and realizing as I do that these morons are the most dangerous ones -- that is, most prolific of any -- that I am very much opposed to placing them out.

Dr. Wallace: Mr. President, not to help Dr. Bernstein, because I know that he does not need it, but with this great wave of education sweeping over the land on one side, and with the great dearth of information that the members of the medical profession, and those who commit these people have upon the subject of feeblemindedness on the other, I think that we have some reason to use a little discretion in the institutions. I don't know how it is in the other states but I know that in Massachusetts it has become too easy a matter to get a child into an institution for the feeble-minded and I do not believe we who are at the head of institutions can idly sit by and allow children to be railroaded into our institutions regardless of their mental condition simply because they have been a little wayward; many of them orphans; many of them without a mother's love and care. An appreciable number, probably the same ones that Dr. Fernald has placed out successfully, had they had mother's care and a mother's guidance could have been prevented from ever acquiring the stigma of entering an institution for the feeble-minded. I do heartily believe that there is a good deal to be said on this side. With the social workers pressing the physicians and the physicians too ignorant of the conditions, there is a likelihood of error, and I know that there is error in commitment. Isn't the time ripe for requiring the judgment of some one who is familiar with feeble-minded conditions and feeble-minded children, to pass upon the cases before they come to the institution, or for allowing us in the institutions to use a little latitude. I believe that the time is ripe for this association to make some move towards framing legislation requiring competent judges to pass on children before they are admitted into an institution. The institution is becoming too popular. The school physicians in our big cities, even those who know feeble-minded children, and feeble-minded classes, because of the pressure that is brought to bear on them from the teachers, because the latter do not understand certain children, are often influenced in passing upon these brighter individuals by deferring to the opinion of the teachers who have had the best opportunity to observe them. I know this to be a fact. A boy, because he does some little foolish thing that the rest of us have done but escaped public censure because we had mothers and fathers to look after us, is passed up as feeble-minded and sent to the institution. We want to keep out of institutions all who don't belong there. I don't believe that the community wants to shirk its responsibility in that way.